During Winter Break, I went to the mall in search of something cute and original for the new year. When I went inside clothing stores, however, I felt an odd sense of deja vu. The racks of clothing from store to store looked oddly familiar. Stores that purportedly had more of a hippy, free-spirited vibe had almost the exact same offerings as what was once known as a lux workwear store. Even in my favorite store, which style I thought matched my own, it was hard for me to find anything not driven by micro trends or something I hadn’t seen in a million other places. With such selections, how am I supposed to build my style?
And it’s not just in stores. In the mall, I also saw that a lot of younger people dressed almost the same, with older shoppers dressed in more unique ways. I was left wondering; what happened to personal style?
Personal style is essentially the story you want to tell with your clothes. Through one’s clothes, one could be seen as elegant, artsy, or punk. It’s also not necessarily about individual garments, either. For example, a pair of jeans paired with a blazer could be seen as professional, while a look with those same jeans with a hoodie might be characterized as casual. However, stylist Oré Zacchaeus said, “Style is meant to emulate your own lifestyle. What you eat, where you frequent, your career path, etc., but social media distracts you from owning that definiteness. We all could benefit from living more authentically, and style could be the first layer to that.” Style is a unique art, blending fiction and fact.
However, it seems like fewer and fewer people are attempting personal style, instead dressing in it-styles and brands. One culprit of this trend is social media.
Influencers and trends now dictate everything from politics, music and even what we put on our bodies. According to the Harvard Crimson, the trend cycle is a simple one. A stylish celebrity wears an item, people rush to buy it, it sells out and becomes significantly more expensive, and people start to feel left out if they don’t have the item. However, when the aura of exclusivity leaves the garment, and everyone is posting about it, demand peters out. Social media can be used as inspiration, but it can more often be used to flatten personal taste.
Of course, trends were always a thing, typically lasting for a season or years. However, I think that these trends captured the ethos of a generation. For example, the trend of tye-dye in the 60s was a visual manifestation of a generation’s protest culture or the width of Victorian skirts meant to be indicative of wealth. But with microtrends and hyperconsumption, where practically anything can become fashionable for a month or so, it is too fleeting and varied to accurately capture what our generation stands for.
The excessive consumerism on social media goes hand-in-hand with fast fashion. Brands like Shein or ASOS have the most to benefit from fast trend cycles because they produce thousands of styles a year at a breakneck pace. Because of the accelerated trend cycle now, excessive waste is caused through high carbon emissions and high water usage. Fast fashion, which once promised to have something for everyone, has instead flattened fashion into the same things for everyone, and at a high environmental cost.
“No longer is personal style curated and developed over a lifetime,” summarizes the DePaulia. Instead, people buy clothes not to reflect themselves or the times they live in but rather to be seen as balletcore, cottagecore, or clean girl, or whatever they want people to see them as.
According to the LA Times, the best thing for both the environment and looking chic is to simply buy less and do more with what one has. Additionally, buying vintage (or simply swiping clothes from a parent’s closet) is another way to be more meaningful about clothing. Whenever I wear my mom’s old shirts, I always get the most compliments. Experts recommend only buying a simple wardrobe of basics and emphasizing it with statement pieces that show off one’s personality.
Recently on my social media, I’ve seen the trend “overconsumption final boss” where someone shows clothes they bought or saw in a store that is almost comically hyper-trendy. Some of these clothes were obviously recently purchased and barely worn but already seemed embarrassingly of a moment and out of fashion. The regret that people expressed over buying these items gives me hope, however, for the future of style.